The Infinite Plan

Gregory Reeves, the son of a self-styled preacher, struggles to overcome his childhood of poverty and neglect and to take control of his destiny

A richly embroidered, ambitious tale, Allende's latest novel charts one man's spiritual progress against five decades of history and cultural change. Allende relies less on her customary magical realism (The House of the Spirits ) than on concrete, often graphic details in her first attempt to depict North American characters and settings. Greg Reeves, the son of an itinerant preacher who claims that life is governed by an infinite plan, spends the latter part of his childhood in the L.A. barrio where his family settled when their father became ill. His best friend and soul mate there is Carmen Morales, the daughter of a hospitable Latino family. The novel follows Greg and, to a lesser extent, Carmen through turbulent experiences as each searches for identity. Greg discovers several different kinds of racial discrimination in the crowded barrio; later, he taps into the social and sexual revolution in Berkeley; and he suffers through the crucible of Vietnam, from which he emerges determined to become rich and powerful no matter the cost in morality or peace of mind. He enters into disastrous marriages with two beautiful women, both of whom, he belatedly realizes, resemble his passive, remote mother; he also fails as a father. Allende's intensely imagined prose has clarity and dimension; she describes the exotic and the mundane with equal skill. The rambling, diffuse narrative nicely mirrors the random quality of life itself: Greg discovers that "there is no infinite plan, just the strife of living." In portraying Greg as all too human and fallible, however, Allende risks making him an unsympathetic character. By the time he gains insight into the emotional factors that govern his personality ("at last I felt in control of my destiny . . . the most important thing was to search for my soul . . ."), readers may have tired of his self-destructive behavior. 100,000 first printing; $125,000 ad/promo; BOMC alternate ; author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The first North America-set novel by Allende (The Stories of Eva Luna, 1991, etc.) begins with a beguiling freshness that rapidly degenerates into boring leftist commentary-cum-melodrama-- in a plot that goes on and on until it mercifully fizzles out in platitudes. Long-troubled Gregory Reeves, who's never been able to regain the security of his early childhood (cutely recalled now in the form of a confession to a novelist), is the son of Charles Reeves, the ``Doctor of Sciences,'' who travels around the country in a brightly decorated truck--along with wife Nora, a Jewish refugee; helper Olga, a Russian; daughter Julia and son Gregory--revealing the secret of life: The Infinite Plan he's discovered. This idyll ends when Charles becomes ill, and the family moves into the L.A. barrio home of Pedro Morales, a Chicano follower of ``The Plan.'' When the father recovers, they move to a run-down cottage--but for the rest of Gregory's life, the Morales family, especially daughter Carmen, will be an anchor for Gregory. Reality soon begins ``irreparably to deteriorate,'' and though a friendly librarian leaves him money to go to Berkeley, ambitious and hard-working Gregory is unhappy. He graduates from law school; serves in Vietnam; moves to San Francisco; makes two disastrous marriages; fathers two troubled children; and earns and loses a great deal of money. Meanwhile, the decades whirl by as ``revolution in the streets [is] replaced by the plague of conformism'' and characters in equally extravagant subplots finally enjoy their own happy endings. Only Gregory has to wait for the novelist to save him, assuring Gregory ``that everyone carries a plan inside, but it's a faded map that's hard to read and that's why we wander round so and sometimes get lost.'' Potentially original characters, denied their own voices as the writer does the telling, are ultimately overwhelmed by sentimental and overwrought gush. (First printing of 100,000) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This novel by renowned Chilean author Allende ( House of Spirits , LJ 4/15/85) is the story of Gregory Reeves's journey from childhood to middle age and long-sought peace and happiness. Gregory's journey is marked by the contending philosophies of his mother's Bahai faith; his father's personally revealed, metaphysical explanation of the universe, called "The Infinite Plan" (the selling of which provides the family's income); and the traditional Catholicism and sense of nostalgia that permeate the Latin barrio where Gregory lives as a child. Though the book is not provocative and the plot is somewhat predictable, it is held together by a deep interest in the colorful, enchanting characters and their evolving relationships to one another. This is recommended for all fiction collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/93.
- Sherri Cutler, Brennemann Lib. , Children's Memorial Medical Ctr. , Chicago
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.